AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
One of the most original and sometimes neglected contributions of Freud's late mental topography was the resulting transcendence of the old debates on man as 'by nature social' or as 'by nature antisocial' and the casting of a new and uniquely illuminating light on the relationship between the individual and his social environment. ![]() Freud’s position could therefore be characterized as a unique type of communitarianism: it seeks a balance between admission of the constitutive force of tradition on the one hand, and the formation of an emotional detachment from its myths, practices and normative claims on the other. But Freud champions only a conditional acceptance of tradition, one that involves ongoing scepticism, ambivalence and emotional distance. ![]() He calls on moderns, however, to overcome this bleak prospect and the related danger of political chaos by accepting the social norms imposed by their super-egos. Because of this sense of perpetual and irrevocable displacement, Freud feared that modern selves might become semi-psychotic, selves lacking an inner social-normative voice. More specifically, Freud suggests that individuals feel estranged from parts of their own psyche (their super-egos) as well as feeling distant from their own culture and tradition (as they are represented by this psychic agency) in modernity, neither one’s mind nor one’s community can promise any longer a sense of ground. This essay argues that Freud’s theory pictures modern selves as coping with a new existential and social predicament: a sense of homelessness within their own home.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |